


Black Water

by Nomanono



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Glow worms, M/M, New Zealand, Otabek's so cool, Traveling Together, Yuri's got a crush, Zine: Terra Incognita 2.0
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 11:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15750711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomanono/pseuds/Nomanono
Summary: “Take me with you.”That’s how this whole thing started: in a parking lot outside the Wellington airport, watching Yuuri and Victor exchange moon-eyes and kissy faces as their luggage was loaded into a luxury tour bus. Yuri paled, imagining his next two weeks playing third wheel. Again.





	Black Water

**Author's Note:**

> I was so honored to be chosen for the Terra Incognita 2.0 zine. It remains one of the most beautiful zines I've ever seen and everyone was so positive and phenomenal. Thank you so much, Yuuya and Kusid!

“Take me with you.” 

That’s how this whole thing started: in a parking lot outside the Wellington airport, watching Yuuri and Victor exchange moon-eyes and kissy faces as their luggage was loaded into a luxury tour bus. Yuri paled, imagining his next two weeks playing third wheel. Again. Phichit and Seung Gil had already departed for Milford Sound. Leo and Guang Hong were Instagramming from Weta Workshop. Then there was Otabek, gearing up his rental bike on the other end of the lot. Yuri had blurted it out without thinking, desperate. _Take me with you!_

Otabek was skeptical, needling Yuri with questions that all amounted to some version of _I don’t think you can handle this_. A motorcycle tour of New Zealand? Hours on the bike every day, rain or shine? Sleeping outside in tents or whatever last-minute hostel they could find? 

“I can do it,” Yuri swore. “Just get me out of here.” 

—

Since then, Yuuri had been terrified no small number of times. A motorcycle tour of New Zealand sounded great on the surface, especially with his best friend, but the reality was hairpin turns on cliffside paths, rolling head over heels in a giant inflated zorb like a hamster caught in a spinning wheel, and praying to the god of gasoline fumes to please just let them reach the next town.

They were on the ferry to North Island, leaning on the rail watching the sunrise, when Otabek said: “So… there’s this place near Waitomo called the Black Abyss…You interested?” After everything he’d been through, Yuri couldn’t back down. He’d said he’d keep up. He meant it.

“Duh,” he scoffed. How bad could it be? 

Now, Yuri stood in a wetsuit on a metal catwalk, looking into a thirty meter pit of darkness. 

It was bad.

The mouth of Ruakuri Cave opened in the middle of verdant forest, surrounded by sprawling fern and mossy trunks, a rope-and-metal belaying structure suspended above. According to Otabek, they were in for a five-hour excursion that included repelling into the cave, hiking through it, black-water rafting on the subterranean river, and “really cool worms.”

As if that didn’t sell it.

Yuri had spent almost a week with his arms around Otabek’s waist or hips, riding on the back of his bike, sleeping in hostels dictated only by the bike’s petrol meter and wearing the same jeans at least four days in a row. They’d definitely hit no-turning-back levels of friendship. Worms or no worms, Yuri was going.

If only he could swallow this damn lump in his throat.

“Davai, Yuri!” Otabek’s hollow voice rose from the void.

“Yeah yeah!” Yuri huffed. He paced the edge. He couldn’t see a thing. Their guide hadn’t pressured him, but Yuri bristled regardless under Sam's gaze. Otabek had just hunkered down and pushed off like it was nothing, barely falling at all before his weight caught and he descended easily into the dark. 

Yuri had spent this whole trip trying to keep up with Otabek’s unending sense of adventure, to prove he was as cool and competent and daring as his friend. He’d done things he never would have dreamed of on his own, all in attempt to live up to Otabek’s impression of him. He was a soldier, right? This should be easy. This should be nothing.

Yuri looked down into the abyss and swallowed. They’d gotten a litany of warnings at the base camp: _Don’t go down if you’ve got heart problems, if you’re pregnant, if you’re prone to narcolepsy or seizure, if you’re afraid of heights, or water, or if you’re claustrophobic. If something happens down there, there’s no way to get you out._

Even at the rink in St. Petersburg, the liability waiver said _chance of serious injury, including death_ \- but this was the first time that phrase gave Yuri pause.

Yuri's steadying breath came out as a growl instead. He could do this. He was going to do this. Hadn't Otabek said something about a fruit bat in the cave? A flying fox? That was worth leaping into darkness, right? He couldn’t just stand here for five hours; what would Otabek think of him then?  

Yuri squatted down.

“Oi! Don’t close your—” Sam said, but then Yuri was pushing off the edge into oblivion. A split second and embarrassing yelp later, Yuri found himself suspended in a sea of black, slowly descending as Sam let out the rope. He opened his eyes. Above, an ever-shrinking circle of light, below…

Nothing.

—

Black water rafting, Otabek had said, it’ll be fun, Otabek had said. 

Damn him, but Yuri would follow him into hell if Otabek asked.  Not that jumping into an abyss felt much different. 

“Kia ora! Welcome to Ruakuri,” their second guide—Wiri—said as Yuri’s feet touched rock. Two faint orange lights joined the filtered sun from above: Wiri and Otabek’s headlamps. Yuri clicked on his own.

The cave wasn’t broad or yawning or anything like Yuri imagined caves to be. This was a deep, narrow crevice in the earth with a solid-rock ceiling, which dead-ended in the sinkhole they’d just abseiled and disappeared into the dark in the opposite direction. The walls looked like crinkled tissue paper, all folds and corrugation, a pale beige color that glistened wetly.

“Wow,” was all Yuri could manage. He clamored onto a protruding boulder, lying on his back next to Otabek while they waited for Sam to repel down. Okay. That part wasn’t so bad. Yuri could do this. He stared at the stalactites and mesmerizing blob-towers of minerals, only to have a droplet of water plink between his eyes. “Gyeck!”  

“What?” Otabek asked.

“A drop fell on my forehead,” Yuri said, swiping at the liquid.

“That’s good luck,” Wiri chimed. “Make a wish, eh?”

Yuri glared, only to realize his facial expressions weren’t exactly visible. Make a wish. Tch. He wished he hadn’t made such an embarrassing sound on his way down. He wished he felt braver, more deserving of his soldier title. He wished… Yuri glanced over at Otabek, at those cool black eyes, always stoic and unwavering. 

“Aw right, let’s move,” Wiri called. Yuri would have to wish later. Wiri led the way deeper into the cave, Otabek and Yuri following a few paces after. They left any hint of sunlight far behind, replaced by the white noise of rushing water and glimpses of rocks that dripped from the ceiling in centuries-old ribbons.

“…this is so cool,” Yuri said, because he had to say something. Otabek’s only response was an almost-invisible smirk of agreement, though from time to time he nudged Yuri’s shoulder and pointed out particularly awe-inspiring crags as they hiked through the narrowing crevice.

“Flying fox time,” Wiri announced. Yuri peered over his shoulder to get a glimpse of the animals, but he couldn’t see a thing. “It’s 55 meters, so just hang tight ’til you reach the end.” What?! Yuri stood on his toes. The floor dropped away ahead, revealing a bottomless gap spanned by twin ropes that looked absurdly like a clothesline..

“A zipline?” Yuri hissed, whipping around to Otabek. “That’s what ’flying fox’ means!?”

Yuri had mentally prepared for the drop into the cave, for the black water rafting, for the waterfall hike later on. But this? His heart twitched anxiously in his chest. _Keep it together, Plisetsky._

“Lights off?” Otabek asked.

“Aw, nah, you can’t see anything out there anyways,” Wiri laughed.

Great.

—

It was over in seconds, probably: a mere impression of wind and motion, Yuri’s body inferring what his eyes could only imagine. It felt like gaining speed for a triple axel, only all the lights in the rink were out. Yuri kept his gasp silent until he found his body swaying at the other end of the line. They were on a natural rocky landing above the subterranean river, its surface visible only as undulating reflections from their headlamps.

Black water.

“Hm,” Otabek said when he joined Yuri.

Yuri gave a breathless nod of agreement: “Yeah.”

They ditched their climbing harnesses in favor of small black inner tubes, piled like a toddler’s stacking toy on a stalagmite. Otabek took one for himself and tossed another to Yuri.

“Jump together?” Yuri asked, too quickly, but Otabek just nodded. They both bent over, inner tubes against their butts as instructed, and Yuri fought the impulse to reach for Otabek’s hand. 

If nothing else, Yuri was getting really good at jumping blindly into darkness.

The water snapped frozen jaws around Yuri’s legs before swallowing up the rest of him. He wanted to scream but the temperature knocked the wind out of him. The inner tube was too meager to keep anything but his shoulders and head out of the water, and he’d plunged up to his throat from the force of his jump. All he could manage was an echoing curse, crude enough he worried Lilia might manifest from sheer impropriety alone and berate him. Yuri gaped like a fish to catch his breath, shuddering.

The water leached into his wetsuit, spreading icy, unwelcome fingers up around his waist and across his chest; it soaked up his legs, his forearms and biceps. This would be their next four hours: frigid water and narrow tunnels, some so submerged that only a head could fit between the surface and the ceiling. 

Yuri’s heartbeat thumped in his ears.

“Link up, you two,” Wiri called. Sam’s ankles were under Wiri’s arms, effectively locking them together as they floated.

“Front or back?” Otabek asked Yuri, somehow swiping his hands through the freezing river like it was bathwater.

“Uh— tch—” Yuri groaned internally. Why was he like this?! Katsudon was supposed to be the anxious one.

“Go in front. You’re always in back on the bike,” Otabek said as he moved behind Yuri. At least the dim lighting saved Yuri’s dignity when he blushed. They got into position, Yuri’s arms resting over Otabek’s ankles, and drifted together with the current.

“Not really rafting,” Yuri pointed out as they floated downstream, headlamps casting an orange glow on the low cave ceiling.

“Disappointed?” Otabek asked.

“Tch." If Yuri squinted, he could just barely make out thin, translucent strands hanging down from the ceiling, beaded with water like strings of pearls. Yuri turned to ask Wiri about them, only to see him blowing up a balloon. “What the?” 

Wiri looked delighted, despite having probably said this same spiel hundreds of times to thousands of other guests: “Everyone thinks the worms themselves glow, but it’s actually their excrement.”

Yuri narrowed his eyes. Glow?

“Loud noises spook the worms,” Wiri explained. “We literally scare the shit out of them to make it brighter.”

Yuri blinked.

“Lights off!” Sam chimed.

Yuri caught a glint of anticipation in Otabek’s eyes before everything went dark.

Absolute black.

Without light, without reference, with nothing but the sensation of floating and the frozen chill, time warped and stretched. Mere seconds stretched like minutes. 

Yuri’s eyes adapted to the dark. He blinked several times, thinking he saw stars.

“Cover your ears,” Wiri warned. Yuri didn’t.

In the echoing cavern, the popped balloon sounded like a gunshot. Those faint stars abruptly blazed, tiny dots of glowing cyan light. Below, in the black water, shone a perfect reflection. Gone was the cave, and the river, and the wrinkly rock above; he and Otabek were adrift in the cosmos, suspended in a timeless star-field.

Whatever anxiety Yuri felt, whatever boyish irritation he’d harbored, it all fell away like a bug sloughing off its skin. Yuri soaked in the surreal display, eyes wide as moons. This wasn’t something you could see online, that you could feel in a postcard. This wasn’t somewhere Yuri would come again. This, right now, was once in a lifetime, never to return.

Yuri hadn’t felt an ache like this before: a spiritual tremor somewhere deeper than his bones. He felt incredibly small, like everything he’d ever done and all that he’d ever accomplished was just a single twinkle in the celestial canopy, and his life felt so impossibly brief, a mere flash of light punctuated by fleeting moments of the sublime, as though, for the first time, Yuri had pushed his head above the clouds and truly seen the world.

“Worth it?” Otabek whispered.

Yuri nodded, numb. His fingers trailed through the freezing water, stars swirling outward and chasing his wake in celestial whorls. The glow worms clustered in streaks like salt tossed across black velvet—luminescent dust scattered in the wind. 

Every fearful moment, every blind leap... this was exactly what made it worth it. Moments like these. People like Otabek. Flashes of the divine amongst the mundane. Yuri trembled.

He looked to Otabek, wanting to share this—this whatever-it-was with him, but Otabek was already looking at him, studying the stars in his eyes.

“What?” Yuri blinked, inhaling as if he’d woken from a dream. 

Otabek didn’t answer. Instead, the corner of his lip quirked up. An invisible blush bloomed on Yuri’s cheeks, and then Otabek turned his gaze back to the cosmos. Yuri listened to the quiet lick of river on rubber tubes and startled when a drip of water splattered on his nose.

_Take me with you, Otabek,_ Yuri made his wish. Always.


End file.
